St. Matthew Island is a small island in the midst of the Bering Sea, off the coast of Alaska. It once had a Coast Guard communications base. In 1944, during World War II, 19 men arrived by ship at the base, along with 29 Nunivak reindeer. These were intended as back-up food in case they ran out of ship supplies.
In 1945, just a few months later, WWII ended. The men on the island were sent home. They left the reindeer on the island, not having to kill a single one. In 1957, biologist Dr. David R. Klein stepped onto the island with assistant Jim Whisenhant to take a look at these reindeer. They noted that the island was carpeted with lichen (LIE-kin), the reindeer’s favorite food. Then, they counted the reindeer. The results sent back to the mainland was over 1,300 reindeer.
1963 was a big surprise, however. Klein and Whisenhant returned to find over 6,000 reindeer roaming around the island. Biologists had in fact foreseen that the herd would grow quickly. What they hadn’t seen was that they would die out because of this.
In 1966, Klein and Whisenhant visited the island yet again. But this time, they saw death everywhere. Bones littered the island. Klein counted only 42 reindeer, and sadly, there was only one male-- who happened to be infertile. 41 were female, and there were no calves. The herd didn’t live to see even the 1980’s.
Klein researched the reindeer for 43 years after 1966. He looked for clues on the island that could’ve contributed to the die-out. He looked at many things, including breaking open the bones to narrow down the time when they died. He found out that they died in the winter of 1963-64. Other than that, there were only two things that caught his gaze.
In 2009, Klein had a major breakthrough. He looked at the weather records of 1963-64 and found the clue that changed everything. This clue was that the winter of 1963-64 was one of the deepest and coldest snows ever recorded in the Bering Sea. Klein also went back to the island to look for more. He found yet another very important clue about the death of the reindeer. This was that the once infinite-seeming plant, lichen, was only on tall places like cliffs.
With this in mind, Klein realized that there was still one more possibility; starvation. He broke open some bones to look at the marrow. There was no fat in the marrow, which he took as clear evidence that they died of starvation. Just to make sure, he checked the weight of the living reindeer, and they were obviously underweight.
Klein concluded the case by stating that the reindeer, overpopulated, were eating the lichen faster than the poor plant could grow. Also, when winter came, they wouldn’t have been able to penetrate the snow. Most of the lichen died underneath of it, except for on high places where the snow would have been blown off by the wind.
I hope this story taught everyone who read it a lesson. The lesson I have in mind is ‘Sometimes, nature can’t control what humans change.’ Technically, humans caused the herd of Nunivak reindeer to die. If we hadn’t brought them to St. Matthew Island in the first place, they wouldn’t have gotten rid of so much lichen, they wouldn’t have overpopulated, and they wouldn’t die altogether one day. Nevertheless, we should be careful about what we do in the world, because it could lead to shocking results that change everything.
Watch this video for visual content:
https://youtu.be/hgx1Hy5AMWM
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